Australia Anti-Asian Leader Resigns

Published 2:10 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

Pauline Hanson, who founded the anti-Asian and right-wing One Nation Party, resigned as its leader Monday, saying she needed to concentrate on fighting fraud charges.

One Nation party made international headlines and alarmed Australia's Asian neighbors in the late 1990s with calls for an end to Asian immigration and strict limits on welfare handouts to Aborigines, the nation's indigenous minority.

Hanson and former One Nation director David Ettridge were charged over the alleged fraudulent registration of the political party in 1997. The pair are due in court in April.

Both have pleaded innocent in a pretrial hearing. The charge carries a maximum 10 year prison sentence.

"It was my decision to hand in my resignation as national president," Hanson told Melbourne radio 3AK. "I've constantly got these court battles and challenges, and I couldn't do the job."

In a 1998 state election, the party's anti-establishment platform attracted almost a quarter of the vote to win 11 seats in the Queensland legislature. At a 1998 federal election, the party won almost 9 percent of the vote nationally.

However, One Nation fared poorly in the most recent national election in November of last year, and Hanson lost her own bid for a Senate seat.

Hanson said she will remain a member of the party but needed to take time off for herself. If absolved of the fraud charges, Hanson said she would not rule out a return to politics.

"I won't say … that I'll never stand for Parliament again, it's something that I have to assess further down the track," she said.